Cardinal Says He Won't Yield to Protests

By TODD S. PURDUM

Published: December 12, 1989

Responding to the arrests Sunday of more than 100 people protesting his statements on homosexuality, AIDS and abortion, John Cardinal O'Connor said yesterday that his approach could be changed only ''over my dead body.''

''I pray that this doesn't happen again,'' the Cardinal said of the demonstration at St. Patrick's Cathedral as he arrived for his annual Christmas luncheon party at the Waldorf-Astoria. ''But if it happens again and again and again, the Mass will go on, or I will be dead.''

''It would have to be over my dead body that the Mass will not go on, the word will not be preached orally or distributed in writing,'' he added. ''And no demonstration is going to bring about a change in church teachings and it's certainly not going to bring about any kind of yielding on my part. I don't say that with any bravado; I'm your basic coward. But I'm the Archbishop of New York and I have to preach what the church teaches.''

Jay Blotcher, a spokesman for the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power, or Act-Up, one of the protest's sponsors, said: ''Unfortunately, the dead bodies that the Cardinal is stepping over are the bodies of the people with AIDS who have already passed away. And what he faces are more bodies of people who could potentially contract the disease because the church refuses to give them access to safe-sex educuation.'' 'Our Tactics Are Numerous'

Mr. Blotcher said he could not say whether the group might continue such protests at the cathedral. ''Our tactics are numerous, and they're very different in all cases,'' he said. ''Negotiations are what we're looking for. If the Cardinal does not choose to change his stand on policies, that's fine, as long as he restricts his moralism to his own congregation and stops trying to foist it on the public at large.''

Cardinal O'Connor has frequently called homosexual acts a sin and has opposed the use of condoms, counseling abstinence. He has also visited many AIDS patients and denounced violence against homosexuals.

Mayor Edward I. Koch, who joined the Cardinal at the party yesterday, called the protest an ''excrescence.'' Demonstrators chained themselves to pews, shouted or lay in the aisles and one person threw a consecrated communion wafer to the floor. 'I Deplore It'

Mayor-elect David N. Dinkins, who also attended the lunch, said of the protest: ''I think it was wrong. I deplore it.'' He added: ''It's clearly improper behavior,'' and said ''people who may be inclined to agree with the protesters in terms of philosophy, they tend to lose by the fashion in which they express themselves.''

Cardinal O'Connor, asked if security at the cathedral would be changed, said: ''Oh, I don't know, I leave that strictly to the commissioner of police and to the courts. If the courts give injunctions, I can't determine that.''

The First Deputy Police Commissioner, Alice T. McGillion, said the department had no immediate plans to change its security detail.

At the Waldorf luncheon, the Cardinal praised the Mayor for showing support by coming to the Mass Sunday. ''Mayor Koch knew where he should be and he was there, and I will die just everlastingly grateful,'' he said.

But the Cardinal also got in a good-humored dig at his friend and fellow author, saying, ''God knows, he's disagreed with me many, many times.''

At that, Mr. Koch interrupted to say, ''Less and less.''

That prompted the Cardinal to say, ''The worst irony of all, and the worst thing that could happen to the church in New York is that he could become a Catholic.'' He said that people often noted that Mr. Koch is ''Jewish, he's proud of it and he'd never be anything else, and I say, thank God.''

photo of John Cardinal O'Connor with David N. Dinkins (NYT/Marilynn K. Yee)